At least, that's the impression given by a report in the Stockton Record. Running under the headline Grand Theft Auto IV Criticized by Stocktonians, the story cites interviews with just two people and gives the clear impression that GTA has adversely affected their lives.

Parent Greg Within told the paper:

My son Peter was never really aggressive, but once he got into video games, 'GTA' being one of them, he started to push, hit, talk back, and just become a different person.

A GTA player blamed his bad behavior on the game as well:

Mark Wellis, 19, said he was involved in an altercation a week after he purchased "Grand Theft Auto IV." At the time he noticed that he had become less sensitive to violence. Wellis doesn't completely blame the game for his violence, but it did affect him.

Comments

Btw, I think Atari and Midway will drop out too, but mostly travesti because these guys have done nothing travesti or little and need to start saving costs. and dizi izle

YES.

Now I don't have to get off my ass for the important shit anymore!

Whats next, ordering pizza from Xbox live?

Wait... I think that sounds like a good idea.

But I think voting should MAKE you get off your ass, and see outside or a second while you go vote. I mean, your picking the president of the United States of America for God's Sake... least you can do is drive down there and punch out a card.

I'm all for freedom of ttnet vitamin speech and allowing rent a car game makers to put whatever they want in games, but there's one thing about this app that has me scratching my head. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from araç kiralama the previous article araba kiralama on this I gathered that players can use Google maps in-game to find the other (real-life?) dealers in their area. If this is the case, has travesti anyone considered what's stopping someone from using this app to actually move drugs between hands for reals?

But majority araba kiralama of their outrage araç kiralama stems from what it could DO TO children, not the content itself. Talk to one of these people and you'll find they don't think any books kiralık araba should be banned from children. Mention American Psycho and they talk about kiralık araç the redeeming value of using imagination to construct a story. Reading, no matter what the content, is largely viewed as a consequenceless activity for people of any age. The reason why I mention American Psycho is because of the content itself. Gaming never has and likely never will have any scenes where someone has sex with a severed head. Not gonna happen. Yet despite this, they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their children from two boys kissing in Bully but whatever they read is harmless... yeah.

The entire arguement is kiralık oto based upon a social normality inflicted by luddites who can't figure out the controls for Halo so it's frightening and terrifying and obviously the cause of youth violence on the rise even though, in reality, it's in decline (which is actually a HUGE suprise given minibüs kiralama the economies status). In a perfect world, we would have parents that actually parent. The idea of sales restrictions on media on oto kiralama any form to accomidate parental unwillingness to get involved with their child's life is the real problem to me. Here I am, 32 years old, and being held up at a self-scan rent a car needing to show ID before I can buy a $10 M rated game all because Soccer Momthra can't be bothered to look at the crap Billy Genericallystupidson does in his free time. It's too hard for her, so I have to suffer?

I'm all for freedom of ttnet vitamin speech and allowing rent a car game makers to put whatever they want in games, but there's one thing about this app that has me scratching my head. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from araç kiralama the previous article araba kiralama on this I gathered that players can use Google maps in-game to find the other (real-life?) dealers in their area. If this is the case, has travesti anyone considered what's stopping someone from using this app to actually move drugs between hands for reals?

But majority araba kiralama of their outrage araç kiralama stems from what it could DO TO children, not the content itself. Talk to one of these people and you'll find they don't think any books kiralık araba should be banned from children. Mention American Psycho and they talk about kiralık araç the redeeming value of using imagination to construct a story. Reading, no matter what the content, is largely viewed as a consequenceless activity for people of any age. The reason why I mention American Psycho is because of the content itself. Gaming never has and likely never will have any scenes where someone has sex with a severed head. Not gonna happen. Yet despite this, they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their children from two boys kissing in Bully but whatever they read is harmless... yeah.

The entire arguement is kiralık oto based upon a social normality inflicted by luddites who can't figure out the controls for Halo so it's frightening and terrifying and obviously the cause of youth violence on the rise even though, in reality, it's in decline (which is actually a HUGE suprise given minibüs kiralama the economies status). In a perfect world, we would have parents that actually parent. The idea of sales restrictions on media on oto kiralama any form to accomidate parental unwillingness to get involved with their child's life is the real problem to me. Here I am, 32 years old, and being held up at a self-scan rent a car needing to show ID before I can buy a $10 M rated game all because Soccer Momthra can't be bothered to look at the crap Billy Genericallystupidson does in his free time. It's too hard for her, so I have to suffer?

Before I played GTA I was a stable teenager from a middle income family.After playing it I found myself involved with gangs, shooting up on hard drugs, my parents divorced, starting doing hard drugs and prostituting themselves and I was beaten regularly by both my parents and their immigrant drug buddies. I also started worshipping Sa-Tan and now cut myself to gain admittance into the cabal of True Power where my D&D character Black Leaf will once again rule the cosmos!

Damn you GTA IV for ruining my idyllic life and plunging me into vicious cycle of violence and parental neglect!Curse your suave graphics and witty dialogue for changing the kind of person I am and altering reality around me like somesort of Hellraiser cube. Why oh why did I attempt to unlock your achivements for points when INFACT I was unlocking the end of morality and decent Western civilization! I was ASSAULTED by lewd pornographic graphics and dialogue that would make my grandmother say "Well I never!" in a way you know just carries the wisdom of ages.

This is just Pong all over again *sob*

I feel your pain man....samething happened to me.....DAMN YOU GTA44444444!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Submitted by fuck the world (not verified) on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 10:08.

lol oh my god are they serious, just because some dad wanted to buy the game for his son and some dumb ass 19 yr old wanted to be retarded or just grow up doesnt mean that this game caused it. oh my god ppl are just insane and need new brains lol. i love how dumb our world is coming to these days

Good of you to put a picture of Night of the Living Dead in your article there, Dennis! It's one of my favorite movies of all time, thank you.

Anyway back to the article, one of the reasons why GTA IV might have adverse effects on these people could have been the realistic gameplay perhaps? Or it might be video game addiction which could have taken a toll on these people.

Whatever the reasons may be, lets hope that I won't get addicted to games once I play them.

Well, all this 'shock' media will have a negative effect on those who are somewhat delicate in the first place. I, for example, could never bring myself to harvest the Little Sisters in Bioshock. It wouldn't have mattered, they are only pixels, but then, I personify things too easily.

That, I suppose, is what the ratings system is for, not to recommend an age, as such, but to recommend a level of maturity required, that's why the US system uses letters primarily, whereas the European system bases itself on Age alone.

As has been said before, you cannot take away the freedoms of the many because of the sensibilities of the delicate few, whether that few be those who are affected by them or those who are offended by them. Someone who is affected by computer games is like someone who is sent on a rampage by a song or a book, they are simply a bomb looking for something to light the touchpaper. As Frank Zappa once pointed out to congress, there's no telling what could set off someone like that, to try and single out a single item as a 'source' of people going on killing sprees is pointless, because the potential is inside the person, not the song, film or game etc.

The fact is that 99% of people who play video games do so without any ill effects beyond a habit of talking in Internet Memes. It is not beyond reality to say that Video Games may trigger violent episodes in isolated cases, but then it is in precisely the same scope as saying that the colour Green may trigger violent episodes in isolated incidences, yet no-one is looking to the government to regulate the colour Green.

Call me crazy, but i find it a good thing when kids talk back, it's a sign of independant thinking. What you want your kid to allways oblige everyone who posseses some kind of might over them? Well personally i would want my kid to question authority and fight for a better place in a better world, you can keep your goddamn zombie spawns to yourself.

Besides as soon as puberty kicks in he will start raising hell anyways. But at least now he starts it for a good reason, material possesion and fighting the evil monarch who tries to restrict his access to it or sometimes even take it away.

To the 19 year old: Was the person you were in the altercation with a total dick? Sometimes people get into fights because of assholes pissing them off.

-GRIZZAM PRIME(c)is property of the U.S. Marine Corp. Wetworks Dept., and also The Incredible Hulk-GRIZZAM PRIME is not to be associated with GRIZZAM 512 or any other GRIZZAM entity under penalty of law, so sayith ZARATHOS.

Reality/////////////////////////////////////Fantasy. Seems like a pretty thick line to me...

Hey look! Zombies! Aren't they just so majestic? Zombies are just the cutest- OH MY GOD!! IDIOTS!!! COMING FROM OVER THE HILL!!! RUN!! RUN!!! WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!!!!!

-GRIZZAM PRIME(c)is property of the U.S. Marine Corp. Wetworks Dept., and also The Incredible Hulk-GRIZZAM PRIME is not to be associated with GRIZZAM 512 or any other GRIZZAM entity under penalty of law, so sayith ZARATHOS.

Reality/////////////////////////////////////Fantasy. Seems like a pretty thick line to me...

Yeah, I live in a town just north of Stockton; and when you go into Stockton, if you value your car you better park it in a well-lit place and hide everything remotely vaulable because it will be broken into. You really can't have nice things in Stockon because then you're just asking for it to be taken...

Stockton is not the place you want to be alone in for sure, you'll find yourself in trouble fast.

Wow. People are fucking stupid. So your teenage son is 13, just hit puberty, and is acting aggressively. But it's a videogame's fault and not nature? MORON.

-GRIZZAM PRIME(c)is property of the U.S. Marine Corp. Wetworks Dept., and also The Incredible Hulk-GRIZZAM PRIME is not to be associated with GRIZZAM 512 or any other GRIZZAM entity under penalty of law, so sayith ZARATHOS.

Reality/////////////////////////////////////Fantasy. Seems like a pretty thick line to me...

I live just north of Stockton in Sacramento, and I would venture that if anyone goes mad in that city, it's probably due to the fact that it's the frontrunner for highest homicide rate per capita in the U.S.....yeah, GTAIV? Not so much.

Ok the company I work for has a production plant in Stockton, California. I have never seen so much high security fencing and barb wire IN MY LIFE until I drove through the downtown area to get to our plant. Crime and violence went up because of GTA?

TOTAL CRAP!

We have a corporate mandate that ANYONE going down to that facility must be at least 25 miles outside of Stockton and cannot stay in the city of Stockton due to employees and consultants who stayed in that area being mugged at gunpoint. To further the issue police would simply shrug and say it happens all the time. These events that trigged the policy happened a year ago in March 2007 to June 2007.

Stockton is a cesspool of criminal activity. If you want proof use any of the earth mapping programs and zoom in on the old downtown area. You'll know it when it looks like a whole bunch of small prisons next to each other. Use the Stockton airport as a landmark and move north from there.

-Loudspeaker "Volume helps to get a point across but sharp teeth are better."

For some reason our american society is just based on agression and violence in general. These young kids, teens and adults just CRAVE violence, however video games aren't the only thing to blame, violence is in the news, movies, music and video games, not just video games alone. Any kid can turn on the news and see lots of violence there. Changing life events such as going to college (I have personally seen 18 year old males crying on their first day of college) and puberty have an effect too. You are still growing at age 19 and the body changes radically during puberty. The best thing to do as a parent is talk to your kids and keep an eye on them and know what they are doing and what they are into. They will behave better if they have support and someone to talk to. If parents actually parent then it shouldn't get too out of hand.

Yeah it's society... Not the environment they're brought up in. Nope. It isn't parents teaching their kids the only way to reason is violence or not teaching kids you can reason without violence. Nope... Never. It's this horrible, ultra-violent, american society. Guess the problem with kids these days and younger generations is that they haven't had a good world war yet. We better get started so we can insure that these younger generations can be less violent like those that include children of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

/SARCASM

-Loudspeaker "Volume helps to get a point across but sharp teeth are better."

Considering that we have a guy here who actually lives in Stockton, I can tell you that it is more than just video games making kids aggressive out there. It's a moderate sized city smack dab in the heart of farming country. Having spent my summers out there as a kid I can tell you that there is jack to do out there unless you have a boat for the Sacramento River, or you like sitting out on the porch.

"The Good, the Bad, and the Videogame" Reviews on the best, worst, and controversial issues of Videogames. gryphonosiris.blogspot.com/

What are you, stupid? You're practically blaming puberty on a video game. Teenagers are more agressive than kids. This isn't speculation, this is fact. Second, why did you get him the game in the first place? If you didn't, how did he get the sixty dollars to buy it with? It's CALLED Grand Theft Auto for crying out loud!

Please try to keep your violence-induced self-masturbatory rants to yourself. Shouldn't you be spending your 'valuable' time trying to save your own career (or better yet, quality family time) rather than proxy-hacking into a random internet blog that only a select group of people look at?

Look, GTA does not cause violence in people. The game provides a free roaming experience. Players are not forced to play, nor forced perform excessive violent acts. They must choose to perform violent acts within the virtual setting. Any impulses the player has to punch someone out of the storyline are impulses that are already present in the indivdual. Start looking inward at the people who are becoming violent, because there are repressed issues that Peter and Mark are going through. Be a parent and figure it out.

If someone paints a picture of a murder scene, stop blaming the paint brush.

You know, honestly, I don't think the public is buying this nonsense anymore. I mean this just sounds so ridiculous and I think the general public is starting to catch on. I'm starting to notice a real change in public opinion. Even people who might see video games as low culture distractions are less likely to believe that they threaten society.

They are just using it as a scapegoat! They rather blame it on something so they can look like the innocent party! Just like what Cartmen did in the Southpark movie. It is pathetic, and I am sick of both the treatment of GTA IV and people's selfishness!

The irony here is that Stockton already has one of the highest crime rates in California. The city is riddleed with gangs and car theft. GTA IV sure as hell isn't making the situation there any worse. Hooray fear-mongering press!

Actually, the article is pretty lame - one mother saying, "my kid has become more aggressive" and one dude saying, "I feel a little different." I guess it's the kind of thing that can spiral if some video game hatin' nutjob uses it to file a lawsuit (*cough*), but other than that it seems like run of the mill save-the-children propaganda. It isn't really all that dire compared to a lot of the stuff that's being said about GTA4.

Before I played GTA I was a stable teenager from a middle income family.After playing it I found myself involved with gangs, shooting up on hard drugs, my parents divorced, starting doing hard drugs and prostituting themselves and I was beaten regularly by both my parents and their immigrant drug buddies. I also started worshipping Sa-Tan and now cut myself to gain admittance into the cabal of True Power where my D&D character Black Leaf will once again rule the cosmos!

Damn you GTA IV for ruining my idyllic life and plunging me into vicious cycle of violence and parental neglect!Curse your suave graphics and witty dialogue for changing the kind of person I am and altering reality around me like somesort of Hellraiser cube. Why oh why did I attempt to unlock your achivements for points when INFACT I was unlocking the end of morality and decent Western civilization! I was ASSAULTED by lewd pornographic graphics and dialogue that would make my grandmother say "Well I never!" in a way you know just carries the wisdom of ages.

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm